Sunday, January 20, 2013

This week at work I was in a hearing in which an 18 month old child who had lived with a foster family since birth was ordered to be sent to live with relatives in another state. It was legally and maybe ethically the right decision. The law is clear that relatives have a priority over foster families. If a child in our extended family needed a home, I would much rather the child be placed with one of our relatives than placed outside of the family. I agreed with the decision. That said, the foster family was there and you could tell that they were devastated. They had taken the baby in through the foster-to-adopt program that is supposed to screen in babies who aren't likely to be reunited with their original families, they had loved that baby from day 1, and you could tell that to them, he was their son. People ask us (especially me) if we've considered the foster care system and I truly have. But I see these cases all the time and I see what it does to people. If I thought it was hard to have Ida for not even three full days and then give her back, I can't imagine what 18 months would have done to us.

In lighter news, I thought you readers might like to see the little cloth diapers we are going to be using someday when we match.

Friday, January 11, 2013

At the beginning of every month I contact our adoption counselor to see if anyone asked to view our profile in the past month. This month I was especially interested because I really want to feel like something is happening. It doesn't bother me to wait a long time as long as I know our materials are being requested. It makes me think that we have done all we can do and beyond that, it's just about whether we are a good fit.

This month my call was kind of fun. Maria told me that my timing was great because she had sent our profile to a woman who asked for it not even one minute before I called. Maria said she could ask around to see if any of the other counselors had sent out our profile last month, but I didn't really care at that point. One was good enough for me!

A couple of friends of mine sent me this link from the NY Times about a couple who went through the adoption process and had a disruption. What my friends didn't know was that the couple had switched to the agency we are using after their disruption, and their happy ending gives me a lot of hope. Here's the story: